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Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

Pema Chodron

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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Meditation
Already
Practice
Away
Become
Better
Befriending
Trying
Mindfulness
Something
Throw

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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A heartfelt sense of aspiring cuts through negativity about yourself it cuts through the heavy trips you lay on yourself.
Pema Chodron
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The painful thing is that when we buy into disapproval,we are practicing disapproval. When we buy into harshness,we are practicing harshness.
Pema Chodron
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Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on.
Pema Chodron
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Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us.
Pema Chodron
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If you follow your heart, you're going to find that it is often extremely inconvenient.
Pema Chodron
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Whatever you are doing, take the attitude of wanting it directly or indirectly to benefit others. Take the attitude of wanting it to increase your experience of kinship with your fellow beings.
Pema Chodron
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Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want.
Pema Chodron
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Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears. We can bring ourselves back to the spiritual path countless times every day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in the uncertainty of the present moment—over and over again.
Pema Chodron
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Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time-that is the basic message.
Pema Chodron
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Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape - all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.
Pema Chodron
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The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves.
Pema Chodron
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We're afraid that this anger or sorrow or loneliness is going to last forever... Instead, acting it out is what makes it last.
Pema Chodron
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The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief.
Pema Chodron
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The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.
Pema Chodron
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Even if you don't feel appreciation, just look. Feel what you feel take an interest and be curious.
Pema Chodron
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Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.
Pema Chodron
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It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness. -Pema Chodron, from When Things Fall Apart
Pema Chodron
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The essence of practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of revenge or self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story lines.
Pema Chodron
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Being preoccupied with our self-image is like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs.
Pema Chodron
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As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people.
Pema Chodron